Late delivery incidents are frequent, almost inevitable, and happen primarily because shipping carriers fail to keep up with their promises of on-time delivery despite their busy schedules during times like the holiday season and while facing supply chain disruptions.
As an e-commerce retailer, it makes sense to take a look at how late deliveries can be problematic for you.
- Up to 10% of parcels are delivered late during the holiday season
- Nearly half of consumers (45%) say they are unlikely to continue ordering from a company even after just one instance of late delivery
- Frustrated customers with delayed holiday gifts will take their frustrations to social media and demotivate others from shopping with you.
In short, late delivery doesn’t have momentary consequences but far-reaching setbacks that can compromise not only your customer experience but also your revenue and growth goals. To help you address this e-commerce business woe, this article discusses everything you need to know about late deliveries, from common causes to how to break the news to your customers. Let’s begin!
Common Causes of Late Deliveries
Did you know that almost 70% of customers say they’re significantly less likely to continue purchasing from an e-commerce business that doesn’t deliver their order within two days of the promised delivery date? Further, 14% will completely cut association with a business after receiving their order late a single time.
But why do packages get delayed in the first place? Well, here are the top 10 most common causes of late deliveries:
1. Rise in Shipping Volume
As your e-commerce business grows, so will your shipment volumes. If your carrier partner is not prepared to scale at your rate, they can get overwhelmed, resulting in delays. Further, peak shopping seasons, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, or national disasters and global pandemics can also affect shipping routes and delivery schedules.
2. Ineligible/Damaged Shipping Labels
Shipping labels are essentially your package’s identity card. And so, if they’re damaged, inaccurate, illegible, or otherwise difficult to read, it’s going to get delayed because your carrier partner will now have to spend time deciphering it to ensure it’s on the right route.
3. Weather Conditions
As much as we’d like, your carrier is not Santa Claus, who can wade through snow storms to ensure your customers receive their packages on time. Like the rest of us mortals, they can get delayed due to extreme conditions such as heavy rain, strong winds, and snow.
4. Traffic Jams and Roadblocks
Traffic is a very real cause of delays, especially in big cities. Delivery trucks can often get thrown off their delivery schedule and be forced to push the delivery intended for the day to the next. Further, roadblocks, accidents, and road construction can also cause delivery delays.
5. Issues with the Supply Chain
Issues with manufacturing your offerings, sourcing materials, and other supply chain blockages can cause delays in package delivery.
6. Incomplete or Inaccurate Visibility into The Shipping Process
When you don’t have insight into your shipping operations, ascertaining where your package is and how long it will take to reach your customer’s doorstep can be highly challenging. This lack of visibility can cause delivery delays as carriers might have to spend unnecessary time tracking down packages, missing details, etc.
7. Customs Holdups
If you’re shipping abroad, customs holdups can occur due to:
- Inaccurate or incomplete documentation, such as invoices, can delay the delivery of your package, as customs officials won’t clear it until additional information is furnished.
- Incorrect details of product description, product code, and value/quantity can also be held back by customs officials for further investigation.
- Inadequately packaged orders can warrant inspection by customs officials, delaying their delivery.
- Political events like border closures and modifications in trade policies can affect customs processes, leading to delays.
8. Issues with Delivery Vehicle
Mechanical breakdowns, accidents, and other vehicle-related problems can cause delays in delivery. At such times, delivery trucks might have to cancel deliveries for the day and wait to deliver the packages the next day.
9. Obsolete Technology
Outdated technology can also lead to shipping delays as it can struggle to manage large shipping volumes and glitches with real-time tracking information. Not only that but obsolete technology can also be susceptible to errors, leading to inaccuracies that create bottlenecks in the shipping process.
10. Lost Packages
Sometimes, the delay in delivery can be caused because of the package going AWOL. This can occur due to theft, mismanagement by carriers, inefficient operations, etc. In any case, you will have to investigate the issue to locate the package, causing delays.
Impact of Late Deliveries
The last mile is often the last word for customers. And so, when this is compromised, you risk losing everything you’ve built with customers up to that point. And we do mean—everything. Here’s a look at how a late delivery affects your e-commerce business:
Loss of Revenue
You can take a serious hit to revenue when your customer opens the door but doesn’t find their package on the porch. Typically speaking, customers can cancel their order when it gets delayed (especially if it doesn’t reach a specific event—think party decorations reaching after the birthday).
This means you have to refund their money, losing revenue. But hold on, it gets worse. You see, the customer can also decide not to engage with your brand ever again because of the delay. 17% of customers will stop purchasing from a business after a single instance of late delivery, with the percentage rising to 55% after two to three late deliveries.
Damage to Brand Trust
When your customer places an order, they’re expecting it to arrive when you said it would. And when it doesn’t, their built-up expectations come crashing down, transforming into disappointment and frustration that disintegrates their trust in your e-commerce business.
In fact, 23% of customers who experience delayed deliveries lose trust in the brand. And when brand trust takes a hit, so does brand reputation, because your customers are not going to stay mum about their experience. And when your brand standing dwindles, your sales and growth also suffer.
Loss of Inventory
Lastly, delayed deliveries can also affect your inventory. When packages don’t arrive on time, it can lead to inventory shortages, leading to you losing out on potential sales. Not only that, but it can also make predicting and planning future demand a task, leading to additional inefficiencies within the business.
How to Prevent Late Deliveries
When it comes to late deliveries—prevention is better than cure in every sense of the phrase. If you can address potential roadblocks in the way of your timely delivery on time, the chances of having to cut a sorry figure before your customer reduces significantly. Here are some strategies to integrate:
Integrate Real-Time Package Tracking
Advanced package tracking solutions allow you insight into where your shipments are and how fast they’re moving toward your customer in real time. This insight helps you foresee and address unexpected delays and offer customers accurate delivery updates to drive their customer experience while ensuring timely delivery.
Facilitate Route Optimization
Planning your route optimally helps last-mile delivery agents find the most efficient path to the customer’s doorstep while also setting realistic and achievable delivery schedules. Not only that, but route optimization also helps reduce travel time and facilitates fuel efficiency.
Take Weather Forecast into Account
Factoring in the weather when planning deliveries can help carriers and e-commerce businesses adjust their delivery schedules, reroute shipments, and inform customers of any delivery schedule changes well before the time.
Identify Alternative Routes
Another preventive measure to help mitigate late deliveries is to identify alternative routes that delivery trucks can take to bypass sudden traffic congestion, accidents, and infrastructure issues. Keeping a Plan B ready in case of contingencies allows deliveries to stay on schedule.
Coordinate With Suppliers
Collaborating and coordinating with your suppliers can also help reduce the chances of accepting orders and setting deliveries that cannot be met during a period of product shortage. Work closely with your suppliers to set realistic delivery timelines.
What to Do When a Delivery is Late
Okay, so you did all you could—you took steps to prevent a late delivery and integrated all the necessary strategies. But somehow, you find yourself having to deal with the aftermath of a tardy package. Is there still a chance to salvage the customer journey? Yes! And here’s how to go about it:
1. Be Honest about Your Capabilities
Don’t put your company in a situation where late deliveries are common because you’re stretching your shipping resources too thin. Provide customers with realistic shipping times, even if that means your competitors can deliver quickly.
Quick shipping is an attractive benefit to consumers, but knowing when to expect their deliveries is far more important. Be honest with your customers about how quickly you can deliver an item. You risk damaging your relationship with them if you can’t fulfill your deliveries on time.
2. Be Transparent about Delays
Even if the reason for the late delivery is not your fault (when it’s due to weather or other unforeseen events), acknowledge the delay and contact your customer immediately.
Your customers already hold you accountable for late deliveries and even go to the extent of stopping doing business with you, so why not take responsibility for it and try to ease their frustrations? Also, customers are more forgiving when you’re transparent about the reasons for the delay and the adjusted shipping dates.
For example, Boxycharm women’s subscription box sends out its products in the early part of each month. Its subscribers look forward to receiving their boxes and complain loudly on social media when boxes don’t arrive on time.
When Boxycharm learned there would be a 2-week shipping delay due to product shortages, it notified customers of the delay immediately and told them exactly when to expect their shipments.
While nobody’s happy about receiving a late delivery, consumers do understand that weather emergencies and product shortages can cause delays.
When you let them know about a late delivery in advance, they’re less disappointed and more likely to forgive the problem.
3. Be Generous with Your Time and Compensation
According to an online shopping study, 90% of consumers complain publicly or privately, online and offline, after a late delivery or other bad delivery experiences.
Negative comments on social media aren’t always bad for your brand, though. People view brands more positively when they respond to negative comments. This gives you the chance to win back your original customers and visitors who are reading through your comments and reviews.
Thank complaining customers for their input, and let them know that you value your business and are making every effort to ensure late deliveries don’t happen again in the future.
Many businesses ask unhappy customers to message them privately, and frequently, this means they’ll offer some compensation for their inconvenience.
Offering a credit, shipping refund, or free gift to customers whose deliveries are late shows that you value their business. These types of small gestures can help you retain customers who otherwise may not return.
For example, when Grove Collaborative experienced a significant shipping delay with its products, it emailed customers with an explanation, a sincere apology, and free gift offer.
By offering a free gift with the next order, Grove increased its chances of customers returning to place an order in the future.
4. Be Proactive and Try Your Best to Resolve the Impact of a Late Delivery
Late deliveries are common and inevitable, yes. But what if there was a way for you to step in before your customers have been impacted by them?
This is where a real-time parcel tracking solution can come in handy.
With the ability to track all your parcels across carriers and geographic locations in real-time, get predictive alerts and flag shipments that seem to be staying behind on schedule. You can then enable your customer support team to intervene and fix the issue before it impacts your customer.
When your customer’s order is facing weather-related exceptions, you can send automated and timely notifications that are customized to the specific situation to keep your customers informed of what’s been happening with their parcels and ease their anxiety.
Even if the issue goes unresolved, your commitment to taking proactive action can help you strengthen customer relationships and build rewarding delivery experiences.
Conclusion
For an e-commerce business, eliminating delayed deliveries is virtually impossible. It is preventable with certain steps, but once in a while, a delivery will fall through the cracks, leaving annoyed customers and a team working against a deadline to salvage the customer experience in its wake.
Fortunately, you have a step-by-step guide now to help you hit the ground running in this unfortunate eventuality, but if you’re looking to truly streamline your response to delayed delivery, it’s time to consider onboarding LateShipment.com’s Parcel and Shipping Invoice Audit software.
Our powerful tool automates the auditing of your parcel invoices to ensure you recover refunds for lost packages, damaged packages, and, you guessed it—late deliveries! It identifies over 50 service failures instantly, resulting in up to 20% in savings on shipping.
In other words, it doesn’t just take the task of combing through invoices and filing for refunds, but it does so efficiently and while driving your savings. Don’t pay an undue cent again, with LateShipment.com.
